


Choices

by Comicsohwhyohwhy



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Civil War II, Civil War II spoilers, Comfort Sex, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, hickmanvengers, sad sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 12:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9324902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comicsohwhyohwhy/pseuds/Comicsohwhyohwhy
Summary: “Do it, Stephen!”Stephen flinches. He has heard those words before, long ago, spoken in a tone so resigned it was hardly recognizable as Tony’s. Steve’s voice is the opposite of that, all cutting despair that cannot accept the inevitable. But there can only be one answer.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iloome (laireshi)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/gifts).



> This is a birthday present for the lovely Laire! She kept on talking about wanting Stephen and Tony, and also, I couldn't resist throwing in a lot of other things she might like. This is very angsty.

When Stephen enters the Necropolis, Tony is there, all by himself. His back is turned, and Stephen is quite glad of that. He takes a deep breath, trying to compose himself, not think of the deal he just made.

The deal meant to save them by harnessing the power to destroy another world. The deal that had cost Stephen what was left of his soul.

Stephen feels himself shake, barely, and when Tony turns around, he makes an effort to suppress the tremors running through his body.

He can immediately see that he needn’t have bothered. Tony is in no state to pick up on any subtle signs of Stephen not coping. His chest is rising and falling rapidly. He seems to try very hard to keep it together, too, but he’s always been easy to read.

There are bandages carelessly wrapped around Tony’s chest and arm, and his nose seems to be broken. He’s wearing a shirt that says _resilient_ , and if the situation were any different, Stephen would have laughed at that. But Tony’s eyes are red and glassy and he looks as if he had forgotten how to laugh entirely.

It’s a harsh look on the face of a friend who has often been able to see the humour even in the direst of situations. But apparently, Tony has reached the end of his rope.

_Haven’t we all_ , Stephen thinks numbly.

“He knows. He remembered.”

Tony’s voice is hollow, devoid of inflection. He is cradling his injured hand, holding it close to his body as if afraid of a beating. ( _So his state must be the result of a beating then_ , Stephen doesn’t want to think.)

Stephen casts his eyes down, shame burning in his gut. He hasn’t even been able to make good on a simple spell to have Steve forget about the Illuminati. And now, on top of everything else, they are on a collision course with the majority of the superhero community, led by Captain America himself. A Sorcerer Supreme truly worthy of his title.

“I am sorry, Tony.”

“It’s not your fault.” Tony’s voice is strained and it’s clearly an effort for him to say those words. And when Stephen looks up again, he can see that Tony doesn’t believe them. But of course he doesn’t.

It’s not like Stephen didn’t expect this. Tony has been staring at him strangely, occasionally, over the last few weeks, when he thought Stephen wouldn’t notice. There was always something guarded in his eyes. And Stephen always knew what must be going on in Tony’s mind.

Deleting Steve Roger’s memory is what started them on this path. It’s the first thing in a long line of sacrifices that will cost them everything they are, in the end. Stephen knows this. And still, it was the only option.

And it was done by Stephen’s hand. By their collective will, yes, but by Stephen’s hand, and Tony can’t forgive him for it. Stephen had known it the moment he saw the utter hopelessness in Tony’s eyes when he stood over Steve’s still body. He only saw that look for one second, then the faceplate slammed shut, hiding his friend’s face. Tony hadn’t said a word when he had picked Steve up and carried him to the Quinjet.

No matter Tony’s agreement, Stephen will always be the man that destroyed every chance at happiness that he and Steve might have had.

But talking about this wouldn’t do any good. What is done is done, and worse things are yet to come, so Stephen nods curtly, acknowledging Tony’s lie. Then he takes a few steps closer.

“Let me take a look at that.” He indicates Tony’s ribcage. If his injuries are severe, maybe Stephen can help him heal. ( _Get him up to scratch for the coming battle_ , a treacherous little voice in his head whispers.)

Tony flinches and clenches his fist. Stephen sees the translocator blink through his fingers. “I’m fine. And we don’t have time for this either way.”

This almost makes Stephen smile, because it’s just so very _Tony_ to earnestly claim that he’s fine while looking as terrible as that. And probably at least some of it is prompted by Tony’s fear of Stephen using magic on him.

“Tony, I’m a doctor too. I have no intention of doing anything you don’t want. But let me have a look at your injuries,” Stephen says gently.

Tony cards a hand through his hair, then he chuckles, unexpectedly. It’s a dark little sound, no joy in it. “If it makes you feel better in the mess that we’re in, go ahead.”

Tony takes off his shirt – Stephen can see him wincing in pain when the movement jostles his upper body. Then he looks at Stephen questioningly. Stephen indicates a table nearby and Tony sits down obediently.

When Stephen lightly touches his ribcage, Tony clenches his teeth and tenses all over. Stephen lets his hands wander, carefully removing the bandages as he does so. Clearly, several of Tony’s ribs are broken, and some of his inner organs might be damaged.

Stephen sighs. Like this, Tony is in no state to even walk around, let alone travel off-planet. The only reason he even made it that far was probably the iron man suit dosing him up on painkillers. Stephen has to do something.

“Do you allow me to use a mild healing spell on you? Not even fixing it all, just the most severe damage. Like this, you are in no state to be up and about.”

Tony raises one eyebrow. “Doctor, I am not sure I trust your magical abilities anymore.”

They hold each other’s gaze for a moment, then they both chuckle. The chuckle turns into a laugh, and Stephen knows it’s inappropriate and not funny in the least, but he can’t stop himself. There are tears forming at the corner of his eyes, and he isn’t sure if it’s just the hysterical laughter or something else too, finally giving way.

Then Tony’s face screws up in pain and he doubles over, clutching his side. Stephen immediately sobers up. “Tony, let me fix this, okay?”

Tony struggles to catch his breath, then he slowly sits up straight again. He starts massaging his temples. “Okay, Doc, go right ahead.”

Stephen conjures a simple spell, and it lights Tony’s body up as it does its work. Tony has his eyes closed and he can see the tense lines of his body and face relaxing, bit by bit. And with a jolt Stephen realises that doing this _does_ make him feel better, much more so that he thought it would. He is a doctor. This is helping someone. Healing someone.

Unlike everything else he’s been doing of late.

Tony never enjoys anyone’s ministrations, let alone if they involve magic, but he lets him, because he knows this is what Stephen needs right now. Tony has always been more perceptive than some people would give him credit for.

When the spell has done its work, Tony slowly breathes out and rolls his shoulders. “Wow, thank you. That does feel better.”

Stephen feels the words warm him up from inside. He smiles, and it might be the first genuine smile in a long time.

Tony’s next words are hesitant. “Stephen, you… you do know I was only kidding about your magical abilities, right. It had nothing to do with your spell, some freak accident led to secrets revealing themselves all over the place. Nothing you could have done differently.”

So at least Tony isn’t in the state he’s in because of some amateurish mistake of his. Relief floods Stephen’s body, and it’s pathetic, because he knows that his pride as a sorcerer, his self-respect is the very least thing on the line here.

“Thank you for letting me know.”

There’s a moment of silence, then both of them flinch as the translocators implanted in their palms send out a new signal. Fifty-five minutes to go to the next incursion. Stephen feels something cold sink further into his stomach.

Tony buries his head in his hands and folds forward. ( _He doesn’t visibly wince anymore_ , Stephen thinks with the barest hint of satisfaction.)

“What are we going to do? Even if we survive this incursion, and I don’t know how, Steve− Steve will bring down the Avengers world on us. He will never forgive us, Stephen. Never.”

Stephen knows that Tony isn’t talking so much about the Illuminati here as about himself. Tony has probably been in love with Steve since Stephen knew him, but only recently had they seemed to work it out – only recently had they openly slept at the same place and turned up to meetings looking disheveled and giving each other dopey dreamy smiles.

And now it is over, and Steve will clearly not rest until he has punished Tony for this most severe and intimate betrayal in whatever way he sees fit. Things have always been personal, between Tony and Steve – but even more so now. Stephen doesn’t know what to say, as words of comfort elude him, so he puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder, steadying him. When Tony looks up again, there’s bright shame etched in his features.

“And he shouldn’t forgive us. Not for what we – not for what I have done to him.”

Stephen hesitates. But the shame burning in Tony’s eyes doesn’t disappear, and so he says it.

“When all this is over, I can offer you the same thing, you know.”

For a moment, there is confusion written all across Tony’s face. But then he almost physically recoils from Stephen’s touch.

“What?”

Stephen sighs. He thinks Tony has understood only too well. “Forgetting.”

Tony looks aghast. Neither of them says a word. Then Tony lowers his gaze to the floor. “That would be too easy. And you of all people should know what happened last time I tried something like that.”

Stephen considers telling Tony he doesn’t have to bear the weight of it all on his shoulders alone, but he knows how hollow that would sound, out of his mouth. So he just quirks his lips wryly. “Well, looking at things now, I don’t think I’ll be in any position to help once all this is over anyways, so it is a moot point.”

Something softens in Tony’s eyes at that. “You will come through, Doc. You always do.”

Stephen clenches his jaw. “Maybe I will, but maybe I shouldn’t. Not like that.”

Tony can’t know what he’s talking about, not precisely – but of course he understands the general sentiment. It can’t be that different from how he felt when he was putting an unconscious Steve to bed, to wake up next to him in the morning and pretend everything was fine.

“You are a good man, Stephen. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

Not long ago, Stephen asked Wong whether he was a good man himself, and he got the answer he expected and deserved. Not this well-meaning lie.

Stephen shakes his head. “I am not a poor, innocent victim in this, Tony. Neither are you.”

Stephen thinks of the ritual he performed, before coming here. The demon he will let into this world to help him destroy another. The last straw.

Nothing good can be left in someone who would do what Stephen has done, all to save his own little world. Nausea rolls in his stomach.

Suddenly, there’s a hand on his shoulder, this time, and Tony’s eyes are full of sympathy when Stephen looks up. “Listen, we’ll get out of this. There is a way.”

Tony is lying, of course, and there’s something pathetic in two men as broken as them trying to find comfort in one another. But Tony’s hand is warm and anchors Stephen to the here and now, away from the abyss he will have to face only too soon. And for a moment, it’s enough.

The moment stretches, and Tony doesn’t take his hand away as his gaze slips to Stephen’s jaw and mouth and his own lips part a little. And right then Stephen knows what will happen – there are other ways of finding comfort in one another, after all.

He raises his own hand to Tony’s cheek and cradles it. Tony leans into it immediately, as if starved for touch. Then his own hand slips to the back of Stephen’s neck as he pulls him in.

Stephen conjures the protective ward around their own little corner of the Necropolis almost without thinking.

***********

It starts out fast and almost desperate. But once it goes further, everything becomes slower, more careful, each touch measured, almost reverent. Both of them seem to be determined to make this last as long as possible, before they have to leave – but this is exactly what he doesn’t want to think about, so Stephen instead kisses a trail down Tony’s stomach.

Tony is warm and soft and nothing like the man of iron he aspires to be on and off the battlefield. He’s also breakable, sensitive and evidently still hurting from the injuries that Steve must have given him, even after the spell. (Stephen doesn’t want to contemplate what exactly happened between them.)

Tony is holding onto Stephen like a drowning man, but Stephen knows he himself is no better. He can feel the power of the demon under his skin, waiting to be unleashed. At some point Tony gets lost in the moment and scratches his nails down Stephen’s back, seemingly without noticing, and at the sharp sensation of pain Stephen is trembling with the power he’s only barely suppressing. Tony’s eyes snap open, wide and worried. He withdraws his hands and is clearly about to ask.

Stephen kisses the question away before it can form on his lips. And Tony seems to understand – he’s very careful with Stephen from that point onwards, but also entirely focused on what they are doing, trying to make it count.

When the incursion clock beeps again, they are done. They part, hurriedly scrambling for their clothes. They don’t look at one another as they go into the meeting room, where Reed is pacing nervously in front of the other Illuminati. Namor snorts as they enter.

“You are late.”

Tony shoots Namor a derisive look. “Aren’t we all.”

***********

When all is said and done, when Stephen has unleashed the demon and killed the other heroes, he wakes up in Tony’s arms. He remembers hunger, an endless hunger for life and destruction. He feels people crumbling to dust, as if he had choked and squeezed them to death with his own hands. Stephen retches, but nothing comes up.

Tony holds him close, pressing a cool hand to his forehead when the nausea overtakes him, but there’s fear in his eyes, and disbelief. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to – Stephen knows only too well what he must be thinking. What he must now think of the man he shared those intimate moments with a matter of hours ago, how repulsed by him he must be.

When Stephen can breathe again and the world has stopped spinning, Tony gently sets him down on a boulder in the godforsaken desert they’ve chosen for their operation. Stephen can make out the others now, standing around and talking, always talking, never doing anything.

When they ask him to pull the trigger, do the unthinkable, he almost laughs, but it sounds more like a sob. He has given everything he had, and it clearly wasn’t enough.

Maybe he should have pulled back sooner. Maybe they all should have.

******

_12 months later_

Stephen stumbles, but Tony steadies him. He looks worried, under his own obvious tiredness, but he is going for levity in his words.

“Are you alright, awesome facial hair bro?”

Stephen quirks his lips at the silly nickname, but doesn’t comment. Of course he isn’t alright. They have just come back from fighting their own friends, once again, a fight Stephen barely has the energy after his encounter with the Empiricul. The teleportation spell has completely drained him. Now the world looks blurred around the edges.

Tony sighs. “I think you need medical. Let me –”

“Medical won’t do me any good”, Stephen interrupts. “This isn’t a problem a doctor can fix, or I’d have fixed it myself right away.”

Tony squeezes his hand, for a moment. “Okay. I’ll try and believe you. But promise me you’ll take the time you need to heal.”

Stephen smiles. “That’d be more time than we have. But thank you.”

Tony smiles back, but it is a frail thing – he is clearly on the brink, the vision that they’ve been exposed to only having further aggravated his already fractured mental state. Steve Rogers, dying again.

To Stephen, it doesn’t just bring back the memories from the civil war, memories that Tony has deleted from his own mind because he couldn’t live with them. It also makes him think of that day in the Necropolis. But he knows Tony doesn’t remember that either, those fateful months having been erased from everyone’s mind by a power greater than them ( _Reed?_ ). In a way, Tony got what Stephen had offered him, long ago – blissful forgetting. Only Stephen wasn’t even allowed that luxury.

Tony’s eyes have taken on a far-off look, and Stephen knows he must be pondering the future again (to not think of the terrible things that have already happened). He folds his arms in front of his body and looks oddly defenseless in the harsh light of the compound. Only some days ago, he all but kneeled in front of Steve and Stephen and the other Illuminati, explaining his fears to them, begging Steve to help him. It’s very untypical for Tony, to drop all his masks like that.

Stephen considers hugging him, for a moment, well aware of how enthusiastically Tony reacts to physical closeness. (And if he’s completely frank with himself, he wouldn’t mind some of that himself.) But there are loud steps behind them, and they turn around when a voice rings out.

“Tony, can I have a word with you on the roof?”

Steve’s voice is steely and brooks no dissent. Tony swallows visibly, but he nods, eyes fixed on Steve as if he were an apparition. He doesn’t look back as he follows the Captain.

_“I’ve learned, finally, after all these years… to listen to Steve Rogers,”_ Tony had said. Stephen frowns as Tony and Steve disappear up the staircase. It is disconcerting, to see Tony so meek and pliant in Steve’s hands. But maybe the incursions left their trace, after all, even if Tony cannot consciously remember what occurred. And maybe Tony will never make a similar choice again, opposing Steve the way he did back then.

Stephen only hopes it’s better that way.

*******

When Stephen next sees Tony, it is only for a short moment, before he gets into that ridiculous suit to protect Miles from Carol. Stephen knows Tony is making a mistake, just as he knows that there is nothing in the world that would stop him. And he is right, after all – Carol’s actions have become dangerous to all of them.

But Stephen also knows this isn’t the only reason why Tony is throwing himself into this fight recklessly. He has no energy to stop him, to stop a Tony so on edge that he can hardly see what is right in front of him. Stephen is still collecting the scraps to put himself together again. Maybe if Tony makes it long enough –

But of course he doesn’t. There are explosions in the sky, and then there’s a figure running towards their hideout. For a moment, Stephen hopes it’s Tony, as he only sees a silhouette through the dusty air. But of course it isn’t.

Steve’s eyes are full of panic as he cradles a limp Tony in his arms. His voice is steady, but there’s a brittle edge to it that betrays the turmoil he must be in.

“You can help him, can’t you, Doctor.”

Stephen looks at Tony, almost reluctant to touch his friend for a moment, too pale and motionless in a way he never is. Tony is energy, always in a flurry, even if it’s a desperate one, and not this eerie stillness. Then Stephen touches his forehead, brushing dark strands of hair aside, and lets his magic flow.

He recoils as if burned.

Tony is gone, there’s no doubt about it, no trace of a heartbeat. Instead… there’s something else. Stephen doesn’t know what it is, but it’s unnatural, some sort of manipulation that he can’t make sense of.

Maybe he wasn’t the only one who sold his soul, Stephen thinks dimly.

Steve’s urgent voice cuts through his musings. “So?”

Stephen shakes his head numbly. “I can’t help him, Steve.”

Steve looks ready to hit him, and Stephen understands even while he gathers his very last scraps of magic to defend himself, should it come to that (he remembers how messed up Tony was, back then in the Necropolis). There’s rage burning in Steve’s eyes now as he belts out a command.

“Do it, Stephen!”

Stephen flinches. He has heard those words before, long ago, spoken in a tone so resigned it was hardly recognizable as Tony’s. Steve’s voice is the opposite of that, all cutting despair that cannot accept the inevitable. But there can only be one answer.

“No.”

It is the dark arts, and it always has been, but Stephen couldn’t do it, even if he had the power left. He did blood magic once. Once was enough.

Tony’s choice was to never oppose Steve again – so let it be Stephen’s choice to oppose him, this once, even if it means not helping his friend. This time, Stephen chooses to do nothing.

Steve stares at him, and Stephen still thinks he might hit him, but instead his face crumbles and he sinks to his knees. The last thing Stephen sees when he turns away is Steve holding Tony’s body close.

_Everything dies_.


End file.
